Caveat Emptor has been in the book business since 1971, and one (of many) of our favorite things about what we do is recycling great books back into the community. Having a browsing customer come in and find that perfect read for the perfect occasion is our raison d’etre! Having knowledge, joy, and adventure passed from generation to generation in the form of a book is a foundational principle on which we have built and maintained our bookstore - and isn’t such a bad idea in general!

This is why we are so excited to announce our program to get free books into the hands of readers around our community. For the last three years, we have been working behind the scenes to build store credit to distribute to educational and non-profit institutions in Monroe County.

It all started with an anonymous customer who donated some books to us. She wanted her books earmarked for credit to go to a certain local school. While we were not set up for such a program, we thought it was a wonderful idea and decided to create something that would do just that. So for every book we’ve received in donation, we’ve put that store credit towards our Book Bucks program and Caveat Emptor has matched it dollar for dollar. We’ve raised over $10,000 worth of store credit and matched it, making our total credit for the community over $20,000!

We’ve distributed quite a few Book Bucks over the last few months, but we need your help with the rest. We had planned on giving the rest (and any other accumulated credit) to local students and teachers this fall, but with our lease ending in August (more on that in another post), we are worried that we might not be around to distribute the rest of the credit. We want to do as much as we can, while we can. Since time is of the essence, we need your help.

If you are a teacher, student, school administrator, school librarian, or a member of any other benevolent institution in or around Bloomington that would like to promote literacy, please contact us at sales@caveatemptorbloomington.com so we can discuss getting you certificates for credit. Please keep an eye out for a FAQ sheet on how you can help in a forthcoming post. And as always, thank you for your support!